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August 27, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The former first counsellor at the apostolic nunciature in Washington, D.C. corroborates Archbishop Carlo Viganò’s testimony that Pope Francis and a number of high-ranking prelates helped cover up ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sex abuse.
Viganò, the former U.S. nuncio, released a bombshell 11-page statement saying that he personally spoke to Pope Francis about McCarrick’s abusive behavior. According to Viganò, Pope Francis actually lifted canonical sanctions Pope Benedict XVI had placed on predatory prelate, allowing him to make repeated public appearances, and enlisted his help in picking U.S. bishops.
McCarrick becoming a “kingmaker” in bishop selection led to the appointments of Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich and Newark’s Cardinal Joseph Tobin (Newark is McCarrick’s former see and one of the dioceses that paid a settlement to a priest abused by McCarrick).
“Viganò said the truth. That’s all,” Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume told Catholic News Agency. He declined to say anything further in that interview.
“What is certain is that Pope Benedict imposed the above canonical sanctions on McCarrick and that they were communicated to him by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Pietro Sambi,” Archbishop Viganò wrote in his testimony. “Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, then first Counsellor of the Nunciature in Washington and Chargé d'Affaires a.i. after the unexpected death of Nuncio Sambi in Baltimore, told me when I arrived in Washington — and he is ready to testify to it— about a stormy conversation, lasting over an hour, that Nuncio Sambi had with Cardinal McCarrick whom he had summoned to the Nunciature. Monsignor Lantheaume told me that “the Nuncio’s voice could be heard all the way out in the corridor.”
In addition to Monsignor Lantheaume, Viganò has another in the Church who is apparently vouching for the credibility of his accusations: On Saturday, the National Catholic Register reported that it “independently confirmed that the allegations against McCarrick were certainly known to Benedict, and the Pope Emeritus remembers instructing Cardinal Bertone to impose measures but cannot recall their exact nature.”
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